The J. Merrill Knapp Research Fellowship

The Board of Directors of The American Handel Society invites applications for the J. Merrill Knapp Research Fellowship to support scholarly projects related to Handel and his world. One or more fellowships may be awarded on even-numbered years to a total of $2,000. Requests for funding may include, but are not limited to, purchase of microfilms, travel for research, and production expenses for publication. This fellowship may be used on its own or to augment other grants or fellowships.

In awarding the Knapp Fellowship, preference will be given to graduate students, scholars in the early stages of their careers, and independent scholars with no source of institutional support.

The next deadline for applications is March 2, 2018.

There is no application form. Each applicant should submit an outline of the project, a budget showing how and when the funds will be used, and a description of other funding for the same project applied for and/or received. In addition, applicants should have two letters of recommendation sent directly to the Knapp Fellowship Committee. Electronic submissions are preferred; letters of recommendation as well as the application itself can be emailed to Roger Freitas at rfreitas@esm.rochester.edu. Paper submissions can be mailed to:

Previous winners of the Knapp Fellowship

Year

Recipient

Affiliation

Supported research

2018

Alison C. DeSimone

University of Missouri–Kansas City

To support a research trip to the United Kingdom for work on her monograph-in-progress, “The Power of Pastiche: Musical Miscellany and the Creation of Cultural Identity in Early Eighteenth-Century England.”

2016

Carlo Lanfossi

University of Pennsylvania

To support travel to view in situ the sources of numerous pasticci involving Handel in some way for his project “Handel as Arranger and Producer: Listening to Pasticci in Eighteenth-Century London.”

2016

Matthew Gardner (runner-up)

Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main

To support travel to view in situ sources of the oratorio Deborah as he prepares the critical edition for the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe.

2012

Regina Compton

Eastman School of Music

To support travel to London to conduct research for her dissertation "Gesture in Handel's Recitative."

2011

Alison Desimone

University of Michigan

To support travel to London and Venice for the dissertation "Female Opera Singers and the Performance of Identity in Early Eighteenth-Century London."

2011

Andrew Woolley

University of Southhampton

To support travel to London, Cambridge and Chichester for the project "Research on the William Walond Manuscript of Keyboard Music in the Gerald Coke Handel Collection at the Foundling Museum Library, London, UK, and Related Sources."

2009

Thomas McGeary

Independent scholar

To pay for the provision of numerous illustrations for the 2009 essay in Early Music, "Handel as Art Collector: Art, Connoisseurship and Taste in Hanoverian Britain."

2005

Nathan Link

Yale University

To support travel to Hamburg to study the Handel's conducting scores at the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek.

2004

Ilias Chrissochoidis

Stanford University

To support research on the political context of Handel's Esther in 1732.

2003

Zachariah Victor

Yale University

To support work on "An Interdisciplinary Study of Vocal Genres and the Pastoral in the Music of Alessandro Scarlatti, 1693-1707," including connections between Handel and Scarlatti as cantata composers.

2002

Minji Kim

Brandeis University

To support travel to London for research on the topic "Handel's Israel in Egypt: a Three-Anthem Oratorio."

2001

Major Peter C. Giotta (Asst. Professor of English)

United States Military Academy (West Point)

'That Divine Poet': Milton, Handel, and Samson agonistes."Prof. Giotta will use the Fellowship for a research trip to England to explore how Handel's oratorio Samson affected the reception of Milton's poetry in the 18th century.

2000

Stanley Pelkey

Gordon College

To explore the the formation of canonical repertoires in Georgian Britain and the influence that those canons, and especially the music of Handel, had on compositional practices in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

1999

Kenneth McLeod

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

To study sources for Eccles' and Handel's Semele in London to assist with the completion of his project, "Masculine Anxiety in Handel's Semele"

1998

Todd Gilman

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

To study sources and materials by the English composer and Handel contemporary, Thomas Augustine Arne, at the Britten-Pears library in Aldeburth, England

1996

Barbara Durost

Claremont Graduate School

To study manuscript sources of William Croft's works in England and to search for concordances in major collections of single songs and anthologies in English libraries, and thereby shed light in Handel's activities during the same period

1995

Mark Risinger

Harvard University

To study Handel autographs in London and Cambridge, England

1993

Michael Corn

University of Illinois

1993

Channan Willner

City University of New York

To complete the recipient's dissertation on the analysis of Handel's music

1991

John Winemiller

University of Chicago

To complete archival research on Handel's self-borrowings from his abandoned opera, Titus (1731/32) and thereby complete his dissertation, "Aspects of neoclassicism in Handel's compositional aesthetic."

1990

Richard G. King

Stanford University

To study Handelian biographical archives in the Netherlands

1989

David Ross Hurley

University of Chicago

To complete the recipient's dissertation: "Handel's Compositional Process: A Study of Selected Oratorios"

Other Awards

We encourage Handel researchers to also consider the following fellowships: